Seven months after the first alpha version, Novell and the community have made it on schedule: the new, free Suse distribution includes a KDE 4 preview, one-click installation, the new Libzypp package manager, and an accelerated boot process.

The distribution includes stable KDE4 applications such as the Kdrc VNC client with tabbed browsing...

More new features: Open Suse 10.3 boots faster than its predecessors. Benchmark tests are available online. The GCC compiler now has a "-fstack-protector" option to help detected buffer overflows. Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) is used by default for encrypted partitions, and Open Suse 10.3 supports the MP3 format in its standard media players, Banshee (v0.13.1) and Amarok (v1.4.7).

The Libzypp package management library replaces the Zenworks Management Daemon (ZMD) used previously. Libzypp is said to handle program dependencies better, and to support faster package download handling. To allow this to happen, standardized aliases are used for repositories. However, ZMD will remain available for Suse's enterprise products. Internally, Gnome has been moved from the optional software directory, "opt" to the system resource directory "/usr", which represents a status upgrade for the desktop.

… and the Compiz Annotate plugin, if you enjoy the idea of painting the screen.

Opensuse.org offers various CD, DVD and update versions, including mini distributions and Gnome or KDE only versions, along with language CDs and non-OSS CDs. Spoil yourself for choice on the download page .